ITALY - DAY 5 Today we moved to join the Splendours of Italy tour. Before we could join the tour we needed to wash our clothes, so we headed into the city centre to the only launderette we could find only to find that we couldn't wash our clothes ourselves but could leave them and collect them four hours later. We weren't sure about this but after a brief discussion, Grandad decided to stay with the clothes and the rest of us would continue to the new hotel dr...

IITALY - DAY 4 Today was our last day before joining the tour so we headed out to find all the piazzas and monuments we wanted to see before tomorrow. We wandered around Piazza del Popolo, which for many centuries was thought to be the main entrance to Rome. We just wandered around taking photos of anything interesting before we boarded the hop on hop off bus and completed one circuit. The bus showed us pretty much everything we had already seen but it was in...

ITALY - DAY 3 Today we were picked up early for our tour of the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel. We stepped over the imaginary border and entered the smallest country in the world. The amount of people lined up was staggering. Thank goodness we had pre-purchased our tickets and could jump the cue. After going through the security check we headed into the museum to wander through the various rooms marveling at the artwork. We wandered through the Raphael...

ITALY - DAY 2 We headed off this morning early to the shop from yesterday and purchased Angelique's present. We then headed into town to wander around before our tour to the crypts and catacombs. We got as far as Flaminio station. Pasqual decided that he would take the present back to the hotel and drop off our passports so he wouldn't have to carry them around with us. While he was gone we wandered through the street stalls looking at the shoes, clothes and ...

ITALY - DAY 1 Drama this morning, our phone stopped working and we spent the morning trying to contact Australia to get it fixed. Finally after a visit from the janitor, a change of phones and several miscommunications we finally got hold of a girl named Mia from the sim card company and our phone was fixed. It only took several hours. So after a morning of phone calls we set off with a name of a shop where we could purchase Angelique's birthday present. We w...